Urban Logistics as an on Demand Service

A consortium led by 3 municipalities (pilot cities) committed to zero emissions city logistics (Bremen, Mechelen, Groningen) has joined forces with logistics stakeholders, both established (e.g. UPS) and new comers (e.g. ViaVan) as well as leading academic institutions in EU to accelerate the deployment of novel, feasible, shared and ZE solutions addressing major upcoming challenges generated by the rising on-demand economy in future urban logistics.

To do so, the ULaaDS project will work on 3 key focus pillars:

1. co-creation process to model future on-demand scenarios for urban logistics and definition of relevant ULaaDS delivery solutions through novel toolkit; 
2. deployment of 2 ULaaDS solutions co-created (combining new delivery vehicles and novel horizontal collaboration models) through a total of 6 multi stakeholder research trials in the 3 pilot cities;
3. assessment of feasible value cases towards urban planning integration (SUMP/SULP).

The ULaaDS solutions will be designed complying with a framework of requirements highly aligned with the call topic and ETP ALICE research priorities. The 3 pilot cities propose 2 preliminary ULaaDS solutions building upon their SotA activities solutions to be further concretised through first project pillar:

1. modular innovative cargobikes operated by crowdsourced couriers to enhance logistics efficiency and multimodality in city centres; 
2. integration of urban dual transport services (high on-demand distribution requirements of small goods with on-demand shared personal transport - eVans offering pooling for cargo, semiAGVs, public transport)

Finally, ULaaDS also involves 4 other satellite cities (Rome, Edinburgh, L’Hospitalet, Bergen) which will also apply the novel toolkit created in ULaaDS as well as the overall project methodology to co-create additional ULaaDS solutions relevant to their cities as well as outlines for potential research trials.

ULaaaDS is a project proposal part of ETP ALICE Liaison program.